Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Mason shown here after having just consumed 15 cases of Carmel Delites, 12 cases of Peanut Butter Patties, and an unknown quantity of Thin Mints. Thanks to him, the Girl Scouts are in busimess for another year. He has lost 75 pounds in the past 2 weeks and is winning NSSA contests up and down the coast!Way to go, Mason!

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Colby shot this 215 pound Sea Bass with his hawaiian sling in 110 feet of water just past the powerplant intake buoy. As this was during that big swell a couple of weeks ago, he had to contend with 25 knot currents and water with the visibilty of chocolate milk. Unfortuantly, the fish did sustain some minor shark damage from an aggressive 15 foot Great White while on the swim in. Luckily, Colby was able to fight off the shark and provide dinner for all on the beach.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

I've had this running problem with my neighbor about his dog. The seasonal flowers I repeatedly planted kept dying. There was an odor of urine. I had found his dog in my yard sniffing around the flowers, so naturally I suspected his dog was the culprit. He was adamant that his dog couldn’t be the one urinating on my flowers. I was polite, but of course, skeptical. I mean, what was he saying, that his dog doesn’t pee, or that he’s trained her to use the toilet? He was very upset that I would suspect his dog of urinating in my yard.

He’s a bit of a tech geek and offered to set up a motion detector that would dial his phone and mine when there was movement in my backyard at night. Nothing happened until Saturday night (when I was out of town). My neighbor captured a picture of the culprits. Sunday morning, there it was - an email from him with the picture - no message other than that. I bought him a bottle of Scotch.

The girl on the right is another neighbor’s daughter. The others are presumably her friends. My neighbor (with the dog) thinks that I should use the picture as my Christmas card this year. He wants to be a fly on the wall when the neighbor whose daughter it is opens it. I don't know, maybe I will. It’s not like any of the girls seem upset that he took their picture.

You've given Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson another opportunity to pretend that the old fight, which is now the safe and lucrative fight, is still the most important fight in our push for true economic and social equality.

Thank you, Don Imus. You extended Black History Month to April, and we can once again wallow in victimhood, protest like it's 1965 and delude ourselves into believing that fixing your hatred is more necessary than eradicating our self-hatred.

The bigots win again.

While we're fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I'm sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent's or Snoop Dogg's or Young Jeezy's latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos.

I ain't saying Jesse, Al and Vivian are gold-diggas, but they don't have the heart to mount a legitimate campaign against the real black-folk killas.

It is us. At this time, we are our own worst enemies. We have allowed our youths to buy into a culture (hip hop) that has been perverted, corrupted and overtaken by prison culture. The music, attitude and behavior expressed in this culture is anti-black, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent.

Rather than confront this heinous enemy from within, we sit back and wait for someone such as Imus to have a slip of the tongue and make the mistake of repeating the things we say about ourselves.

It's embarrassing. Dave Chappelle was offered $50 million to make racially insensitive jokes about black and white people on TV. He was hailed as a genius. Black comedians routinely crack jokes about white and black people, and we all laugh out loud.

I'm no Don Imus apologist. He and his tiny companion Mike Lupica blasted me after I fell out with ESPN. Imus is a hack.

But, in my view, he didn't do anything outside the norm for shock jocks and comedians. He also offered an apology. That should've been the end of this whole affair. Instead, it's only the beginning. It's an opportunity for Stringer, Jackson and Sharpton to step on victim platforms and elevate themselves and their agendas.

I watched the Rutgers news conference and was ashamed.

Martin Luther King Jr. spoke for eight minutes in 1963 at the March on Washington. At the time, black people could be lynched and denied fundamental rights with little thought. With the comments of a talk-show host most of her players had never heard of before last week serving as her excuse, Vivian Stringer rambled on for 30 minutes about the amazing season her team had.

Somehow, we're supposed to believe that the comments of a man with virtually no connection to the sports world ruined Rutgers' wonderful season. Had a broadcaster with credibility and a platform in the sports world uttered the words Imus did, I could understand a level of outrage.

In the grand scheme, Don Imus is no threat to us in general and no threat to black women in particular. If his words are so powerful and so destructive and must be rebuked so forcefully, then what should we do about the idiot rappers on BET, MTV and every black-owned radio station in the country who use words much more powerful and much more destructive?

I don't listen or watch Imus' show regularly. Has he at any point glorified selling crack cocaine to black women? Has he celebrated black men shooting each other randomly? Has he suggested in any way that it's cool to be a baby-daddy rather than a husband and a parent? Does he tell his listeners that they're suckers for pursuing education and that they're selling out their race if they do?

When Imus does any of that, call me and I'll get upset. Until then, he is what he is – a washed-up shock jock who is very easy to ignore when you're not looking to be made a victim.

No. We all know where the real battleground is. We know that the gangsta rappers and their followers in the athletic world have far bigger platforms to negatively define us than some old white man with a bad radio show. There's no money and lots of danger in that battle, so Jesse and Al are going to sit it out.

Monday, April 09, 2007

SAN ONOFRE, California (Rueters) - A colossal half-ton squid, believed to be the largest ever caught, was captured recently by Dingo, fishing in his favorite area off the San Onofre nuclear power plant.

"I was just trying to catch a mutant halibut like I normally do. All of a sudden I felt a terrific pull. It was like I was having a tug-of-war with BK and Tube," said Dingo.

Expert Dr. Ralph said the squid had weighed in at 1,089 pounds and measured 33 feet long — heavier but shorter than initial estimates of 990 lbs and 39 feet.

At the time it was caught, Dr. Ralph said it would make calamari rings the size of tractor tires if cut up, but they would taste like ammonia.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Saturday, April 07, 2007

During the hours of darkness last night, someone decided to swap out the wind indicator at the Point.

Because there has been a lot of controversy surrounding the one recently erected by Mayor Murphy, and there is a long time rivalry between the guys down at Old Mans and the Point Crew, I suspect that one of the old boys had a hand in the dastardly deed. Probably that Sydney chap.

Friday, April 06, 2007

This March 2007 photo released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows Dr. Chris Ralph of NOAA's West Coast Fisheries Science Center in Dana Point, Ca., holding a 38-inch ruler up to a giant shortraker rockfish. The fish, according to NOAA, was caught in mid-March by Dingo, fishing from his surfboard at night just west of the San Onofre Power plant.

Monday, April 02, 2007

Dingo had just been laid off from work. He was standing on the railing of a high bridge getting read to jump off, when he happened to look down and see a little man with no arms dancing all around on the river bank below.

He thought to himself, "Life isn't so bad after all," and got off the railing. He then walked down to the river bank to thank the little man for saving his life. "Thank you," he said. "I was going to jump off that bridge and kill myself, but when I saw you dancing even though you have no arms, I changed my mind."